Look Closely by Laura Caldwell

grown-up Caroline from the picture, sitting on a couch, legs curled under her, stitching a quilt square by lamplight. For me. That was the truly
    striking part.
    “Can I speak with her?” I said.
    Matt cleared his throat. “She’s not here.”
    “Wel , can you have her cal me? I live in New York, but I’m out of town right now. I could give you my numbers.”
    “I wouldn’t know where to reach her.”
    “Excuse me?” I had the sensation of fal ing backward, zooming far away from that dream of Caroline on her couch.
    “Look, I can’t say much else. I don’t even know if you real y are her sister, and even if that’s true, I…” He trailed off.
    “Has something happened?”
    “You could say that.” The gruff tone had returned. “You haven’t heard from her, have you?” He said this last bit as if the thought had just occurred to him.
    “No, I haven’t talked to Caroline since I was a kid. If you could just tel me where she is. I don’t mean to bother her. I just want to talk.”
    There was a pause, as if Matt was thinking. “Look. I’l be honest with you. Caroline is missing. And I have no idea when, or if, she’l be back.”
    9
    They’d been in Charleston, Matt said, at his cousin’s wedding. Caroline was quiet, but she got that way sometimes. She’d gone to the bathroom inside the mansion, and she never came back. He went looking for her. At the hotel, he found a note from Caroline saying she was fine, but she needed a break and she would be in touch. But she hadn’t cal ed. It had been two weeks.
    If only, I thought, if only I’d looked for her a few weeks ago. I could have talked to her. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken off.
    “Why would she have left like that?” I asked.
    “I thought maybe you could tel me,” Matt said.
    “Me? What could I tel you when I haven’t seen Caroline since I was seven?”

    “You’re in contact with your father, aren’t you?”
    I felt defensiveness and apprehension rol up my spine. “Yes,” I said cautiously.
    “Wel , maybe you should see if he knows something.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” But of course, I had an idea. Caroline’s letters implied that she’d had some contact with our father, but I had chosen to believe that such contact had drifted off after a while, that what my father told me was true—Caroline and Dan didn’t want to be part of the family anymore.
    I heard Matt breathing on the other end.
    I pushed my chair back and stood up. The sunlight was slanting through the open French doors now, right into the room. It was too bright.
    “Look, I can’t talk about this,” Matt said, “I want to leave the line open. I mean we’ve got cal waiting and al that, but I can’t take any chances. So unless you can help me out, I’ve got to go.” He paused. “It’s just that I miss her so much.”
    It was the tenderness in that last sentence that made me sit down again. Caroline was missing. I couldn’t simply turn my back and head out for lunch as if I hadn’t learned anything, as if I hadn’t done al this to learn everything.
    “What if I come there?” It was out of my mouth as soon as I had the thought.
    “You’d do that?” He sounded hopeful.
    I calculated the beginning of my week in my head. If the arbitrators had their decision tomorrow, I might be able to leave for Portland in the afternoon, and if the decision wasn’t ready until Tuesday, maybe I could leave that day.
    “I have some work to take care of,” I said. “I’m near Chicago right now, but I’l get a flight out in the next day or two. I’l be there.”
    Ty knocked on my door at 5:00 p.m., just as he said he would. He wore khaki shorts and a navy-blue sweater with a white T-shirt peeking out at the neck. He seemed to have even more freckles around his eyes, as if he had been in the sun.
    “Hi,” he said. He stood in the doorway, seeming like he didn’t own the place and he needed to be invited in. “How’re you feeling?”
    “Better than